ThermaCare Tackles Male Cramps

Published on January 24, 2007.

ThermaCare "Men With Cramps"
Women can stop bitching and moaning about their "special time of the month," because men feel your pain. Quite literally, in fact. The quasi-scientific proof took the form of Publicis and Kirt Gunn & Associates' online campaign for ThermaCare Menstrual Patches, in which fictional doctor Gerhardt Fardel exposes the shocking epidemic of male menstrual cramps and documents his noble efforts to find a cure in a series of online videos. "Women who try the product love it, but not enough women knew about it," says Publicis executive creative director David Corr. "To get the conversation going, we knew we had to do something different. Just as "Dog Bites Man" isn't news while "Man Bites Dog" is, we decided to go with a non-traditional creative idea and use non-traditional media, which is why we reached out to Kirt Gunn & Associates to not only engineer the viral campaign, but also write, direct and produce the films." The Men With Cramps website also features an interactive timeline of male cramp milestones, a map-based translator of little-known travel phrases, and a History Channel-esque documentary that will have you positively cramping from laughter.